Indeed. Some at the BBC do it deliberately, but they also only seem to employ (almost exclusively) lefty, pro EU, pro open door immigration, climate alarmist people with arts degrees. Usually insufferably PC and with a big government, anti-landlord, high tax & enforced “equality” regardless of merit. SJW types in the main. I became certain that Cameron what a wrong-un when he appointed Lord Patten as Chair of Trustees on some large fee. There were far, far better people who would have done it for nothing.

Perhaps they can find a place for Theresa May now she has more time on her hands. She is right up their street (other than she is white, not gay and getting a bit old I suppose. She is very much on the left too though some at the BBC would call her “extreme rightwing”. Which is their euphemism for “evil racist”.

Marr’s pathetic interview of Farage the other week was an outrage. Though Farage still came out well on top.

The BBC have adopted a very clever tactic. They only ever invite one pro-Brexit panel member, so that when they’re shut down by the other Remain guests, no-one is there to pick up and continue their argument. Job done. We’re paying for this bias!!!

Indeed sometime 4:1 sometime 5:0 very occasionally during the election period 3:2. So they can never get a word in edgeways due to endless interruptions from other guests or the chair. Usually about chlorinated chicken, some misquote about experts or something equally stupid.

They’ve been doing this political bias since at least 1997 when Blair infested it with his activists.

You might also notice that their high street interviewees are not randomly selected either……they usually interview some liberal minded cretin who just says; ‘dunno really erm……..well I suppose I’ll have to give in straight away, it’s no use fighting it’. You know the type, easily recognisable on camera; they have a spare fence panel in their trousers, just in case.

The BBC and Remoaners in general will of course continue to spin this to suit their own agenda, but the fundamental truth remains. Of those with the UK’s own best interests genuinely at heart, Leave is clearly still in the majority. End of.

Nobody can get us out whilst the commons is full of remainers. Over 500 of them. Championed by the speaker. Until we eject those from parliament we will not get out. Especially when Bercow can allow back benchers to make law within a day to thwart it. We need to start by sacking the speaker, without giving him a peerage to do more damage in the Lords.

SNP and PC are also Pro Remain and unless you also think we should break up the UK you cannot discount voters form those regions. On both Nations the Labour Party was punished for fudge.
Incidentally it is remain that cares about the country , its jobs security and services . Brexit only cares about a country it thinks existed in the 1950s

Remain hasn’t got a clue about caring for the country. There is no single market in services, and tariff barriers operate in some EU sectors. The EU is busy trying to suppress innovation and clamp down on a digital future. Job security ? Job security? you are having a laugh, unemployment especially amongst young people in the EU is atrocious. Meanwhile here in UK we have almost full employment and 830,000 unfilled jobs.

Newmania, Remain pretends to “care” about the jobs dependent only on our exports to the EU – which is about 12% of UK GDP. But only because Remain cares even more about the EU. Remain couldn’t care less about the vast majority of our jobs – those involved with the other nearly 88% of our GDP.

I do certainly, personally, utterly discount the votes of those whose only purpose going forward is to break up the UK. They do not care in the slightest about our country as a whole and therefore their opinion means less than nothing to me.

I accept that this is perhaps not the way most see it, nor that it means they did not have an effect in the referendum. And they lost. Again.

Regardless, even counting their 4.5% vote as all Remainers, Leave still has a majority so long as both the Conservatives and Labour stand on a platform of “some sort of Brexit” and 25% vote for that.

Had Labour climbed down off the fence sooner, yes, they would not have lost so many Remainers to LibDems, but also — and most tellingly — they would also have lost another million or two votes to the Brexit Party. This is precisely why they have stayed on the fence for so long, so let’s not pretend otherwise.

I have no wish to break up the UK. It would be a sad day if that ever happened. However, in a few years time, after the UK has left the EU – the politicians of the other UK countries may apply pressure for their own referendum. They might want a straight choice between the UK and the EU. I very much hope the voters choose the UK.

Julie Dyson, Whilst that is all true, the real question is why does continuity Remain (aka the BBC) look at the entrails of this election rather than refer to the Referendum which gave the specific answer to the single question Remain or Leave? Apart from the obvious, of course.

I accept the result of 2016 which said “what”, but it did not say “how”, and it is for those who said “what” to come up with a “how” which can try and build bridges in this UK.

As Bill Clinton once said, “it’s the economy, stupid”, and the “short term turbulence” of a WTO Brexit, which is a euphemism for people losing their jobs, is not a price worth paying in my view. (There’s a reason for remaining – not putting people on the dole unnecessarily).

Even today there are those such as Daniel Hannan still arguing for EFTA as the destination for leaving (and EFTA is leaving as the members of EFTA are not members of the EU). It’s a compromise and I would personally accept as it would be the best way in my view of minimising the economic impact of leaving.

However, EFTA/EEA is not considered the “one true Brexit” now held up with almost religious fervour by many.

Article 50 which 600 odd MPS voted for states that we Leave the EU and THEN negotiate

So you want to remain for an entirely fictitious made up reason.

Give me ONE example of who will lose their job because of world trade come on stop spouting this stuff and give some examples

There are currently 830,000 unfilled jobs in the UK , we are about to create another 660,000 in the next 18 months

Your argument is entirely the wrong way around. By ending free movement we will create far more jobs vacancies because we aren’t filling them from Eastern Europe any more . This has been one of the major attack angles of the Remain camp that the NHS won’t have any staff etc

11% of our trade is with EU 27 countries , we already trade with 130 countries that dont have full agreements with either Us or the EU

I’m still waiting for a reason to BELONG to the EU , you’ve given a made up reason why we shouldn’t leave. What does the EU offer us I asked

Lord Ashcroft has published an analysis of the poll result based on a 10,000 sample. It will make sobering reading for the Conservative and Labour parties. If the respondents stick to their stated views, then both parties will have lost a substantial portion of past voters come the next election. MPs, such as Philip Hammond, mulling votes of no confidence in the event of a ne deal Brexit, should calculate that it would probably destroy the Conservative party for good.

“Among all those voting in the European elections,… 50 per cent said they wanted to leave, 46 per cent said they wanted to remain, and 4 per cent didn’t know. “ (poll: 10,280 European elections voters) – Lord Ashcroft

“The clear winner of the British elections was the Brexit Party, which went from nowhere at the start of the year, to winning just shy of a third of the vote share. This result could have been even higher if turnout in leave areas had matched those of the remain heartlands.” – Henry Newman (soft Remainer)

Freeborn John, One of the interesting facts which I discovered whilst leafleting in the Referendum for VoteLeave was the other two leafleters going the rounds at the time: LabourIn and Green Leaves. Yes, some Greens are actually Leave supporters.

YouGov indicates the split in the Referendum for Remain/Leave as: Tory 39/61; Lab 65/35; LD 68/32 (!!); UKIP 5/95 (!); Green 80/20. Even if YouGov’s analysis is somewhat inaccurate, using these EU election results in the simplistic manner of the BBC, Observer etc is garbage.

How long do we have to tolerate the unashamed pro-EU propaganda machine and political organisation that the BBC’s become?

Tory MPs know what needs to be done. They know the type of leader we demand. They know we want an ardent Eurosceptic that promises to purge the EU-Blairite-Labour influence from our public institutions

I read Mathematics & Physics at Cambridge University and later Physics and Engineering at Manchester albeit rather a while back. I have worked as an engineer for most or my life (military aircraft, cars, electronic control systems, building materials and building construction). I still do. Most thing seemed to work and the buildings still stand.

Lifelogic, That is not possible – the BBC could never be made impartial. No media outlet can. Groupthink (aka social norms) is human nature. That is why the BBC should not be universally funded. Those that like the BBC should pay for it. And those that like the BBC should not expect the rest of us to subsidise them.

If the BBC were a subscription service rather than having a licence fee, would we even know?

The vote represents a tremendous Brexit victory, particularly so when discounting votes from those supporting Remain parties but who did not know what they were voting for, could not tell us what is in the Five Presidents’ Report, have no clue about the damaging economics of the Euro, have never seen a Target 2 balance, have a world view that stops at the borders of the Evil Empire, and otherwise are too thick to considered.

@formula57; Subscription and Commercial TV are just as bad, (ITV, Ch4 & Ch5 didn’t even cover the overnight count as live programmes), Sky news is just as ‘establishment’ as the BBC are, as they were even before before being sold off by News Corp.

The problem with our MSM is not who owns the broadcasters or news print titles, it is how they are regulated – but would you the political right want it any other way, if you regulate to make sure that your own message is heard, you either allow your opponents messages to also be heard or you get accused of bias, if not censorship.

jerry, If there was a level playing field for funding – media paid for by the consumers of it – the competition would be more even. Media to suit your bias, and to suit my bias, would emerge because the profit motive, even if only for the type of advertising, would encourage it. At the moment the dice is heavily loaded to the BBC, and that distorts the market, preventing fair competition.

But which funding method should it be? All three funding methods have real issues, not just the TVL fee.

Advertising revenue is a fixed size pot, what revenue is available has already being spread to thinly – at least to maintain the current multi-channel offerings.

Theoretically there is no problem with subscription based TV, so long as suitable payment options are available [1] and the various offerings are based around the customer having individual channel choice (opposed to the current subscription packs), otherwise yours or my “bias” will still end up funding what we do not approve of.

By the way, my only bias is against those who actively seek to create bias. I have said this before, I am not defending the BBC by my support of the TVL fee, I am defending Public Service Broadcasting. The does BBC need root and branch change, I just do not want the baby -in haste or spite- thrown out with the bath water so to speak.

[1] the TVL fee can be paid in many ways and thus almost zero disenfranchisement, whilst Commercial TV is indirect PAYG via the checkout basket

@anon; The only way to fund Public Service Broadcasting is either a direct fee/tax to the end user, the TVL in other words, or via a surcharge on subscriptions, which would simply be passed on to the end user as a higher basic fee anyway.

The idea that PSB can be funded by advertising is a non starter, as I said that jar is already being spread to thinly, ITV actually has a PSB duty but has been trying to look for a way for some time to reduce and even remove that requirement to their broadcast licences, even considering handing back their ITV1 licence at one point!

Donations, always possible, that is how PSB is in the main funded in the USA. PSB funded that way is, in any meaningful sense, all but non-existent – even though the need still exists.

Does PSB here in the UK have to remain as it is now, no, the BBC needs to do very much less, very much better, and there is scope for (ultra-)local mico-TV DVB-T channels [1], in the same way as micro-radio stations have become popular on DAB. These micro-TV stations could have the statutory right to simultaneously broadcast non commercial national events (using a feed provided by the national broadcaster), and access political programming via a UK version of C-SPAN.

[1] but the DfCMS has rowed back on that idea, even though the costs are constantly coming down

Those of us with only half an active brain cell had her number from way back. She was contemptuous of Brexit voters and never had any intention of implementing their decision. She threw away all the negotiating aces in our hand while grovelling to the EU and the Remoaners.

The EU elections have shown the full extent of her treachery. The party has haemorrhaged votes on a massive scale, the effect of which is to humiliate the party and its workers. – 3 seats in a national election! – 9% of the national vote! – The CUP has NOT topped the vote in any parliamentary constituency! In Windsor and Maidenhead the CUP came 4th in votes cast! Why wasn’t she stopped 2 years ago?

Without doubt the most dishonest, duplicitous and inept PM of all time! For all our sakes don’t let her remain in office until July – kick her out now before she wreaks for even more havoc on the nation!

Doug Powell: “For all our sakes don’t let her remain in office until July – kick her out now before she wreaks for even more havoc on the nation!”

For years we’ve had a ‘Deputy’ Prime minister, just hanging around doing nothing much at all. Clegg, Brown, Hestletine. I’m not suggesting any one of those were any use at all, nor suitable for the role.

Yet, when we need one to step up and get rid of the worst prime minister in history after she’s resigned. Apparently, no one can be found.

My apologies, but there will need to be a Departmental sub-judice enquiry into this, with timely submissions requested from the Electoral Commission, the ECJ and possibly the UN.

Establishing a correctly constituted Enquiry Board may take a lengthy period, as the Equalities Commission must also be consulted; the media are therefore politely asked to ignore the matter for a minimum of 18 months.

The thing about these elections is the socio-economic demographics have a dynamic of their own which have been changing over decades. Including eliminating the working and middle class barriers, uncontrolled mass immigration, and pseudo climate science.

However political parties can only say ONE thing on their manifesto and they need to differentiate themselves from each other. You therefore get a layer of manifestos ontop of a moving ground. A bit like 6 people jumping back and forth on a shifting ice flow.

All the stresses in the parties under the manifestos have all been in plain sight. Labour struggling to reconcile working class with immigration. LibDems between upper middle class and green. Conservatives between the corporate outsourcing and middle class jobs.

The immigrant dynamics has meant Labour has jumped into the immigrant camp and corporate lobbying has meant the Conservatives have jumped into an extremely small corporate camp. LibDems have become BBC lifestyle types and Greens to be O-Level graduates playing at science. These are all minority subgroups.

The rump appears to be The Brexit Party who are jobs, democracy and the nation.

The BBC is so biased against Brexit they have given up trying to appear impartial.

However, the success of the Brexit Party shows that the Conservatives need to discard the WA, prepare to leave on WTO terms whilst pushing for a free trade agreement. Any form of a Brexit in name only will not restore the Conservative fortunes.

The Leave campaign in 2016 made it crystal clear that a deal would be negotiated and finalised with the EU BEFORE Art 50 was invoked. It follows that the Brexit party’s plans have no mandate at all in the 2016 vote, and in last Thursday’s vote they gained hardly even one-third of the votes cast. The results make clear there is now a majority for remain

If rhetoric could do it we would be gone a long time ago, however the situation is much more complicated than first thought- Latest vote numbers for Brexit party plus UKIP will fall well short of 17.2million- I suspect

Decriminalise license fee payment and do it now.
It is a social justice outrage that the poor can be sent to jail for having a TV.
The BBC lost any moral high ground when they paid Gary Lineker millions of pounds per year for a couple of hours work.

Going after the media fat cats would be a vote winner. Especially with the poor. It make it about social justice, because…it’s true.

Steven,
exactly – no commentators, panelist, actor etc no matter how many shows should have remuneration exceeding £250k p.a.

The license fee should be dropped to say £120 from Jan 1st 2021, then say £90 from Jan 1st 2022, then £50 from 1st Jan 2023 and a login introduced. At which point the over 75 can choose to pay, or use their tv without BBC.

Libertarian: Question: “Otherwise care to cite the law that makes TV (the use of a broadcast or data stream) compulsory?!

Jerry: Answer: “You really don’t have a first clue how the broadcasting industry works, .. ”

In the wild, notice how the jerry never addresses the question posed, always scratching around in the undergrowth collecting straw there, twigs here, constructing a magnificent straw man edifice, which with a masterful stroke, the Jerry can demolish with one peck.

@APL; Oh for goodness sake, if you must join the argument at least actually read the thread and thus get your attributions correct! What you try to attribute to @Libertarian is what I asked him – having mocked his style of address.

Try actually reading what I said, you will see that I did address the point @Libertarian made by asking him to cite the law that makes people watch broadcast TV…

@libertarian; Take you own advice! Sit down, take a deep breath and try to think this through without allowing your obvious hatred for the BBC to cloud rational thought.

“I am forced by threat of law to pay for a TV channel I dont want to watch “

Your point being what? People are also forced by law to pay many other taxes and fees for things they do not use, might not use or may well object to. CND members would love to be allowed to withhold some of their income tax that they believe is used for nuclear weapons, you appear to be arguing that they should be allowed to do just that… Should those without children be exempt from a proportion of their income tax that would otherwise have paid for their children’s health or education services.

Those who do not want to pay the VED for example should not keep or use a motor vehicle (under 40 years old) on the public roads, those who do not want to pay the TVL fee should not use a TV to watch off-air broadcast TV. After all its not as if there are no other options, one can use a taxi or PT instead of your own car, but a bike. It is quite legal to stream non BBC content via your computer or smart phone etc. instead of plugging an aerial/LNB into your television receiver. It is quite legal to use a TV connected to a DVD player to play commercially released pre-recorded content – even BBC content.

“You know I own 3 radio stations.

So you keep insisting Walter, but then anyone can claim the same, but unless they provide proof, such as their Ofcom licence numbers… Of course you might just own audio streaming websites, calling them “radio stations” out of ignorance.

@formula57; “all are required by law to buy a licence to fund the BBC.”

You mean a bit like those who pay a full fee VED each year but object to having to fund Motorways because they only ever use local roads, and what is more they only use their car on Wednesdays and Sundays, to do their weekly shop and attend church?…

If you knew the first thing about broadcasting you would know that the old TV and Radio licence was indeed levied for the provision of the broadcast equipment network ( transmitters) In your analogy, the road network . The BBC long ago ceased to provide these services, the radio licence was scrapped and the TV licence is now just a tax to fund BBC programming that a lot of people dont want . Using your analogy the BBC should fund Sky as they provide the satellite broadcast network and BT as they provide the internet broadcast network

Joyous result…almost as good as the Referendum. Let us hope it is not similarly trashed.
BBC already on the case spinning and spinning malevolent-spider-wise.
Even a mild ballot box reaction to all the dreadful things they have done to us is more than they can bear.

A Sedgewick, Incredibly it seems that many Conservative MPs still do not realise how bad it is for their party, and them. And that’s despite the dreadful local election results before this. Theresa May still delusionally tweets that the bad “night” for Conservatives “shows the importance of finding a Brexit deal …”. Heaven help me!

So I predict that Tory MPs will offer a Remain (Hammond??) and a “Leave” – almost certain to be Michael Gove – to the CP members. Both bad choices, so they will have to opt for Gove. And that will be the end of the Tory party.

NickC…. I fear the case for Tories understanding what has gone wrong for years is hopeless. They will reduce the no-hopers down in the House, until they have to eliminate a Leaver to ensure the last 2 are Remainers. That will ensure the party stays on life support for years.

I don’t think Gove makes it to the final two as ‘the’ Brexit option. I think he might have the best chance of anyone to secure the ‘remain’ caucus (there aren’t enough ‘honest’ remainers to field their own candidate. For example, Rudd pays lip service to Brexit – provided it’s of the May variety, as indeed does Hammond). He will also claim to be a genuine Brexiter, making the soft wing of the party think he has a fighting chance with the membership. Indeed, I suspect only Boris, of the likely candidates for the final two, would beat him, and there’s every chance Boris will fall between two stools, or trip himself up, and be eliminated by the MPs. But whoever ends up as leader, it’s possible to imagine the party not splitting in the next few months. The real question is what extent they end up splitting the Brexit vote in the inevitable GE…

If you have ten parties then the vote will get split.
Brexit Party won, they got the most MEPs.
To get the level of vote they achieved when they only became a political party a few weeks ago is astonishing.
That percentage vote you quote would give any party at a general election an majority of well over 100.

BBC has £3.75 billion a year for government propaganda purposes along of course with extra payments courtesy of the E.U. This is British ‘soft power’ in action helped of by its ‘world service’ and BBC Media Action in many developing countries and its funding of regional and’ local democracy journalists’ here , and don’t forget its almost monopoly of f.m radio frequencies pushing out their views on BBC Local Radio.

The Conservative party has achieved it’s worst result since the 1830’s – had this been a general election the party would not have won a single seat.

Clearly, voters are unimpressed with the failure to take us out of the EU on 29th March as promised, they are also unimpressed with the current crop of cabinet ministers and their resignations, the refusal of the PM to resign months ago after the WA was voted down by Parliament, the odious Boris Johnson’s utterances and inability to tell the truth etc etc

Whoever wins the leadership election can look forward to at least a generation out of power.

And ignore the votes of EU nationals who would not be eligible to vote in a national referendum.

And further ignore the c. 63 per cent. of eligible voters who chose not to vote on this occasion (amongst them presumably some boycotters, many who thought the election pointless, and those who did not view the poll as a repeat referendum).

‘Another triumph of T. May’s non-leadership though.’ -aye I wonder if she realises what an absolute failure she is, she could have got us cleanly out of the EU and been regarded as one of the greats.
Now she’ll probably end up parked in the House of Lords.

Funnily enough I’ve just reported OFCOM to the ICO for a massive breach of GDPR they sent me personal and financial information on people not remotely connected to me, despite me telling them this is the THIRD time they’ve done it .

OFCOM almost always dismisses complaints about the BBC because they are effectively run by the BBC

Listening to Hammond on Marr yesterday suggesting he will throw his toys of the pram if the Government goes for no deal, shows the Remainers in the Conservative party will learn nothing for the EU election loss, after all they have learnt nothing from 1300 Conservative councillors losing their seats.

In light of that I am intrigued by their logic, the Hammond Remainers say they can’t possibly allow No Deal as this would make us poorer , but they would happily collapse the Government which would install a Marxist Corbyn Government that would bankrupt us all. So the Hammond position is not really about economics, its about his and their undying loyalty to the EU.

” shows the Remainers in the Conservative party will learn nothing for the EU election loss”

Au contraire – the 9m Remain voters against the 6m Leave voters have confirmed what we have said for a long time – a huge number of people have changed their minds since the referendum and will now choose a remain party to make sure we stay in the EU.

How many Liberals were actually Liberals, returning from their fling with Corbyn now Corbynmania is over? How many Greens were actually environmentalists, newly galvanised by St Greta? The “green wave” across Europe was nothing to do with Brexit. Is it too cynical to think the miraculous appearance of the child was carefully timed to affect these elections?

You are now counting Labour as a remain supporting party as are the BBC.
But when people complained about bias on question time panels the BBC said that members of Conservative and Labour parties were counted as leave supporters.
Which is it?
In a general election that result would give the Brexit Party a majority of over 100.

Far too simplistic. Firstly, you cannot assume that because people voted other than Brexit they are Remainers. Secondly and more important, we have several millions of EU citizens here who all have a right to vote in the EU elections, but not in a GE. Thirdly, this was conducted under proportional representation, whereas Parliamentary votes are FPTP. You cannot simply extrapolate anything like that from last night’s vote, so I suggest that far from Sir John being innumerate, you are politically illiterate. Fourthly, Brexit won, so get over it and stop trying to cook the books in the true Remainer fashion.

The 3 million EU citizens living here were disenfranchised – they were told at the polling stations that their documents were not in order as so they couldn’t vote. This scandalous situation was caused by local government returning officers being unable to process their forms in time, despite having three weeks notice.
Had these local government officers been working in the private sector they would be claimin job see let’s benefit by now

Another Remoaner distortion (commonly known as a lie). It should not have happened, but according to reports, it was a few hundred who were turned away, not 3 million. Do try finding some more substantial straw to cling to.

It says a lot about our host that he allows a juvenile and abusive comment like yours to appear on his site.
But, there you have it. You typify everything we know about remainers (except why they revere their EU, because they rarely tell us).
Very simply (so that even you can understand it):
Remainer = never a comment without an insult.

Wab, You are the one who is a bit backward when it comes to statistics. The Referendum result clearly shows Leave won. In all other elections – national, local and EU – party and policy voting gets in the way of the simplistic view you hold. For example YouGov stated that about 32% of LibDems voted Leave.

The BBC even had Alastair Campbell on, who has been campaigning for a People’s Vote since the referendum result. Anything to avoid addressing the glaringly obvious voting conclusion that we should leave the EU now, and discuss possible trading arrangements afterwards.

Of course the licence fee should be scrapped. Let people be free to choose what they wish to watch or listen to without being taxed. We should not need a license to sell products or provide services. Of course the Biased Broadcasting Corporation should compete on a subscription basis with the other providers of broadcasting services. We will then be able to see all too quickly the extent to which they will be forced to diminish the claptrap that they spout. May the best providers of goods and services win – and good luck to all of them.

SKY are no better. They totted up Brexit and the Tories as being 39% for leave against the Lib Dums, Greens, Labour and the SNP, PC as 40% for remain. Of course if they had bothered to include the UKIP vote, which they didn’t, it would have taken the leave vote higher yet they bothered to include the SNP and PC who no-one outside of Scotland and Wales can vote for. In some cases SKY are even worse than the BBC in their bias and that’s saying something.

It is interesting that the new spin coming out of the BBC is that remain parties polled 40% while the Brexit parties managed just 35%. Given that Labour and the Conservatives’ official position is to leave the EU then Brexit parties polled 60%.

The mitigation then goes that Conservative and Labour stood on multiple issues and so attracted voters across the spectrum. Why does that not apply to Greens (the environment) and Lib Dems (authoritarian redistribution)?

In any event the turnout was too low to read anything much into the result one way or the other unless it is that when you give people a protest vote they will use it.

Bias..when Brexit has been rejected outright and all I hear is the “victory” of Nigel Farrge … .Yes there is a bias , the Labour Party were wiped out in Scotland due to their Brexit prevarication and the surge in SNP support portends the breakup the Union to the North as well as in Ireland
You didn`t promise that !

How can you possible continue with this transparently nonsensical clap trap. Brexit lost the popular vote

You are not adding the Conservatives onto the leave side?
Odd because Green and Lib Dem election leaflets I recieved said they were a party that promise to leave.
And you feel Labour are now a remain supporting party?

Though last time UKIP took 29 % that then translated into a referendum win. This time TBP (+UKIP) took 35%. Whatever games the elite, London, undemocratic LDs play it is clear that the UK just needs to prepare to, and actually, leave.

I hear that 60% if voters did not turn out to vote. So long as Art 50 is in place they are counting for Leave.

If Newmania can be so lunatic to assume the voting intentions regards mixed policy parties (such as the Greens) then I should be allowed to assume that the 60% were not in favour of saving our membership of the EU.

Anon…..anyway the Greens are trying to believe that if all Brits stop driving cars, lorries, trains and planes the Climate Crisis (wot crisis?) will immediately stop, and the World including China, India, USA, Brazil and those Scandinavians who keep cutting down trees, will suddenly be so impressed the birth rate will crash, nobody will burn fossil fuels, and the planet will stick to walking everywhere. You will know it might be working when Emma Thompson stays in America and refuses to fly.

Another fact , but how many seats do they have? What is the lasting power of that fact,Does it truly represent mood? will it have an impact on the next general election or will other parties who have a similar view win. It seems not.

I really don’t have an opinion about Brexit any more. We can manage without all the other EU countries,( and hopefully trade) no doubt and what upsets me is that so many men died in wars trying to keep us independent and now we just let them walk all over us. Piers Morgan says that he doesn’t like people who don’t have an opinion, however I am not learned enough to have an objective view. I haven’t got the right degree. Philosophy means that you think . We just have to be black or white and go with the flow .This I cannot do.

I have been on Johns Blog site for many years and Brexit is not the only subject Johns writes about, but having said that you convince me , play the politician who tries to persuade and say why there has been a failure to deliver in non abusive terms . You are also a voter : have you got the intellectual or visionary acumen to speak for everyone?

What upsets me is that so many people died in wars so future generations would not have to. And Brexiteers failed to learn from the mistakes which led to those wars and are repeating them all.

The EU is an imperfect organisation. Nobody argues otherwise. But it has done more to enshrine and expand peace, democracy and prosperity across Europe than anything else ever. No, NATO did not do it. The EU did.

Your generation is the first in 1000 years which did not have to send its young men to die in a foreign field in Europe. My generation has not had to do it either. I fear for my children’s generation though.

The wannabe Churchills on the Brexit side talk of Dunkirk, D-Day, the Blitz spirit. They think WW2 was our finest hour and are happy to relive it. They say we survived worse. They largely did not live through it – or, if they did, they were very small children. These Brexiteers probably spend weekends watching The Great Escape and The Dambusters. They understand sanitised war not real war.

I think anything which led to the deaths of millions of people is a massive failure which we should seek to avoid repeating at all costs. Brexit is everything those war heroes fought against.

I was watching the BBC coverage until about 2:30am and I did not see or hear the BBC say TBP had come second. What they did and are pointing out is the fact that, as a percentage of a In or Out vote collectively, Remain parties came top (Remain 51.02%, Leave48.68%, Indies or unclear 0.03%).

Of course the turnout was very low compared to either a Ge or referendum.

There is thus no room for complacency if we want Brexit, we also need to take the fight to Remain by explain that there is no such thing as a “No Deal” exit, WTO are a deal, one that the EU quite happily trades on such terms with many countries already, nor does it cause border/customs delays.

PS, a message to those, like Mr Farage, who question our current electoral (“two party”) system, that would allow parties opposed to Brexit, opposed to sensible economic polices, a much larger goal mouth to aim at too…

@Jerry; Sorry to follow up on my own comment but I used the wrong set of figures (my SE area rather than the UK national % share), the national vote is even worse, 54.4% to confirmed or broadly Remain parties, with 44% going to confirmed or broadly Leave parties.

Unlike the definitively Leave TBP, what you call the ‘broadly remain’ parties are not purely about remaining and people may have voted for them for other reasons e.g. because they wish for Scottish independence, or because they believe in climate change.

A percentage of those voting in the MEP elections are EU citizens – who are ineligible to vote in a general election. Commonwealth citizens are though, and may prefer us to untie ourselves from the EU and open ourselves up the the world.

@SecretPeople; The same logic can be applied to TBP, Remain supporters who accept the referendum result and who simply want a resolution after 3 years.

Then of course whilst TBP manifesto was a two point plan for Brexit we all know what many of the ex UKIP members wanted just three years ago, never mind in 2014, we all know Mr Farage’s opinion on migration, trade, etc. many will have voted for ‘Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party’ without perhaps even reading TBP election leaflet.

My intent was not to rubbish the result, I’m warning against complacency, suggesting being vigilant, showing how Remain and the europhile MSM can ‘massage’ the result.

I note the SNP are saying they ‘won’ in Scotland, they might have the most MEPs but the non nationalists won, 53%+ voted for non nationalist party candidates. If the SNP try to spin this as a reason for a second indy-ref they are gilding their lilly once again.

Jerry,
You missed the point. Our kind host was referring to the fact that despite the Brexit Party coming first the BBC kept referring to how well the LibDems had done coming second. If the roles had been reversed it seems unlikely, given its clear anti-Brexit attitude, that the BBC would have given such prominence to the Brexit Party.

@Edward2; In other words I have to “stop beating my wife” to prove your point, no you prove your own point, prove bias against either Breexit or TBP!

But I will indulge you, whose was the only valedictory speech were heard on the BBC live TV EP election coverage, having just won their EP seat, clue it wasn’t a LibDem MEP, nor a Green, not a Labour or Tory MEP either.

Sorry Eddie but I have to ask, did you actually watch what you’re now complaining about?…

It was a simple request. jezza.
I haven’t heard many complaints from remain fans about BBC coverage so I thought you might have.
But don’t worry if you are too busy.
PS
I think you will find that valedictory speeches are given by the winner.

“I think you will find that valedictory speeches are given by the winner.”

Duh, that was by point. You are so busy trying to find fault, find anti TBP bias, you forgot [1] that the only valedictory speech broadcast by the BBC election night programme was that of a certain Mr N. P. Farage of the Brexit Party….

[1] or never realised, because you did not actually watch the programme you now complain about

I’m not searching for bias Jerry
Your original post talked about bias by both sides.
I simply asked if you had any handy examples of complaints of bias made by the Remain side.
Your only example so far is rather lacklustre.

@Edward2: I did not use the word “bias” once in my original post, nor did I insinuate bias, I simply warned that our political opponents would use the percentage of the vote against us. Nor did I use such a word in the post you directly replied to.

Sorry Eddie, you really should try actually reading the thread before trying to help out your ‘troll buddies’

Let’s be really honest: every Brexit and UKIP vote was for WTO Leave and all we had making that proposition was Farage, who is a weak vessel, but who has done wonderful service and punched way above his weight. I applaud him but don’t really want to vote for him!
Imagine what the vote would have been with someone like JR making the case, spelling out the economic uplift etc etc…
Consequently was a truly massive win last night and we must turn ‘remain’ into ‘rejoin’ and remove ‘revote’ from their armoury ASAP.

Elect the right PM and Cabinet, then get on with it along the lines I have suggested. Get it done and dusted way before 31st October. The cackling establishment and the headless remainers are already trying to blind side reality. Speed of execution is essential. Think of it in terms of D Day rather than a gathering of the Synod.

Leave say the result was a clear victory for Brexit. Remain say it was a clear victory for Remain. One thing can be concluded: Continuity Remain can no longer go around saying ‘no-one voted for no deal’. 40% of the electorate just explicitly did that.

It feels to me like we are heading for another referendum. The alternative would be to go for a renegotiation with WTO Brexit on 31 Oct as the backstop. Parliament would presumably then vote to revoke article 50 on about Oct 20th & the Conservatives would then need to fight an election on the basis of back to square one and re-triggering article 50. This time with a clear policy for a Canada+ deal and WTO Brexit if the EU refuse it.

That’s right, and yes Starmer is today attempting to set the conditions for a second referendum that would be between remain and what he calls ‘a credible leave option’. He doesn’t get to rule out a WTO or no deal exit. And the European election result helps to cement that option, thankfully.

The BBC never report balanced news especially anything not inline with their world view.
After seeing Leave means Leave leader Richard Tice winning speech overridden by Ms Kuenssberg I turned off the TV.
Meanwhile ‘En Marche’ in France is ‘In Retreat’ and Frau Merkel is looking Frown Merkel.
BBC won’t be too pleased and Farage will be gunning to torpedo the enforced license fee tax.

Old people disproportionately voted Brexit- fac . I don`t personally especially care how old someone may be. Fascism and Corbyn`s equally dim witted fairy tales are supported by the young
Perhaps we can agree on some things
1 The system whereby National questions are settled on a local basis has become unsupportable . FPTP must be moderated at least
2 There is no longer any middle ground – any future referendum can be simply No Deal versus Remain- the cake / eat it position is is now dead.
3 To pretend the destiny of the 67m people can be decided by a constituency about the size of Worthing and that this is “democracy” is a farce and such a con will never be forgiven

@Newmania; The case for and against FPTP are the same today as they were 30, 40, 60 and more years ago, the only thing that changes is who calls for it to be changed/kept, when you’re winning FPTP is fine, when you’re loosing FPTP needs ditching.

Funny how the europhile Blairits never changed the voting system, after all they had the majority to do almost as they pleased between 1997 and 2005 (and often did…), but now the very same disciples bleat that FPTP is so unfair…

libertarian….maybe the students read the press who dare to point out the horrendous unemployment figures of youth in the EU countries, or better still talk to the foreign students who explain the mess their countries are in.

One reason I pointed this out is that Gavin Esler is the Chancellor of the University of Kent which bills itself the European University , It is based in Canterbury and him and Adonis have been holding meetings on the campus talking to students . THEY STILL LOST in Canterbury to Brexit Party and by a large margin too

Maybe students and young people were never as solidly remain as Andy, Newmania and others would like to think

” dare to point out the horrendous unemployment figures of youth in the EU countries”

At 14.9% across the EU the figures are not ideal but compare well to our own youth unemployment figures at 11.5. Those again are nowhere near as good as those in the Netherlands at 6.5%, Czech Republic at 6.1% and Germany at 6%.

That explains why right wing parties failed to make any headway across Europe being overtaken by the Greens and Liberals.

Carefully not mentioning the dreadful levels of long term unemployment and youth unemployment in some EU nations.
But like most EU fans you gloss over such problems as being the fault of those individual nations whilst telling us any good news is due to your beloved EU.
PS
Current UK youth unemployment January to March 2019 was 10.8%
Which is down from 12% compared to the previous year’s same period.

A General Election would broadly follow the same pattern with Leavers voting for The Brexit Party, Remainers voting for the LibDems, and Conservatives and Labour squabbling for fourth place behind the Greens.

A new party leader making promises would make no difference: trust has gone. Destroyed by the Conservative Party’s mendacity and the Labour party’s two-faced evasiveness.

The only way forward for the Conservative Party is to promote constitutional change: tying MPs to their manifestos with departure from the manifesto leading to departure from Westminster and an instant by-election ; referenda prior to accession to any international treaty; and significant reduction in the size and power of the House of Lords.

However, a new party leader needs to focus first on leadership of the party. Three objectives: a united cabinet; a manifesto supported by the members; MPs who are committed to, and held to, the manifesto. If they can’t lead the party, they certainly can’t lead the country.

BBC jeeez…from the website “The liberals and Greens had a good night, while nationalists were victorious in Italy, France and the UK”. Three of the four major economies won by so called nationalist parties, but liberals and greens mentioned first. The licence needs to go.

It was a well known fact that the establishment in Britain were quite stupid and shallow, overwhelmed by their own self – image, so at contrast to how they were actually perceived.

The Tories thought they were the party of Churchill and Thatcher, just a modern version. Sadly, the modernisation merely meant a lurch to the left and a ponderous naivety and immorality which knew no bounds. The BBC still sees itself as the national broadcaster, respected by one and all.

Most stupid of all are the socialist parties. Labour were convinced that Scotland was their fiefdom and the voters could be safely ignored. They did not learn from the humiliation heaped on them by the SNP and decided that they could safely ignore their own leave voters.

It’s best to regard poloiticians and the media as extremely stupid people who only learn from repeated exposure to reality. The BBC, protected by the telly tax, will never learn and no matter how supid and bigoted they are, they are secure in their own little socialist world. Waxing lyrical about their pet LibDems coming second is something they would especially scorn if that attitude were perpertrated by another organisation in slightly different circumstances. Imagine the opprobium they would heap upon the Daily Mail for celebrating an English white athlete’s second place in the Olympics 100 metres while ignoring the black boy from Harlem’s new world record time in first place.

BW, Unfortunately you could be right. However, it is possible – miracles do happen – that some of those 500 MPs might do the honourable thing and accept our democratic vote, even if they still think we were wrong. How naive am I?

Alastair Campbell seems to be an ever present on the BBC these days and was allowed to get away with a smear comment about “roubles” for Brexit, which Richard Tice challenged, but Campbell said he hadn’t got a sense of humour.

Kuensberg made a comment that Farage seems to attract ” a certain type of voter”.

ITV didn’t find it interesting enough to provide any coverage, so no Peston pauses.

The Brexit party’s performance is all the more remarkable because its “no-deal/WTO terms” message was up against all the propaganda put out by the Government, the Chancellor, the Treasury, the Civil Service, the BoE, the CBI (whoever they are because they do not publish a list of members or from whom they receive their funding), the BBC and most of the MSM, etc. that exiting with “no-deal” would be “catastrophic”.

If the Conservative Party MPs allow the membership to select a Brexit supporting leader who then puts forward the positive benefits for a “no-deal” exit, and shows proper planning for this exit, then there is no doubt that this will become the most popular outcome in Parliament as well as in the country and once executed and will save the Conservative Party from electoral extinction.

Only 5 out of 10 voters across the EU28 as a whole voted
What does this say about the EU and its Parliament?
Who is making all the fuss about our leaving the European Union, only the MP’s, not the Public.
Parliament gave the decision to the Public, but because they did not agree with the decision they hope the Public will change their minds at the next attempt.
60% of the voters don’t care whether we are in the European Union and its Parliament or not.
Thornberry says Labour losses were due to Corbyn not being definite on a confirmatory referendum. She argued that the Party should then campaign to remain in the EU when that ballot was held.
We are in the dark as to what we have to confirm. Labour have a fine sounding very vague wish list of an agreement they want with the EU.

So Farage’s rebranded UKIP fails to make a significant advance. They won everything UKIP did last time – plus a couple of seats off the Tories, marginally more votes and that’s it. Despite relentlessly news coverage of Farage his only policy – WTO Brexit – was rejected by almost 70% of the electorate.

But what a night for the Remain parties. A huge rise in seats at the expense of the Tories and Labour. Almost a million more votes than both of Farage’s parties combined. The Tories absolutely wiped out in London and swathes of the south east. And the Lib Dems and Greens did this – unlike Farage – while being all but ignored by the media.

Boris as PM may sway more to vote for the Tory Party. Anyone else despite their desire would probably not.
The ERG and others should consider joining the Brexit Party at some stage especially if October is another delay on leaving.
Might be a good idea to have informal talks now with the Brexit Party on possible Manifesto. It could be the next Tory One-Nation Tory Party called Brexit Party. It’s up to you!

Here the solution should be to privatise the BBC with the smaller world service split off, the money made from this can be spent on housing while the public make a decision if they want to pay for it.

This also highlights the extremely difficult position the next conservative PM will have connecting with the electorate when the BBC and even Sky disagree with their view.

I am almost coming to the end of your book “we don’t believe you”, one area where I do disagree is on freedom of speech. In the UK we have hate speech laws and the full force of the law enforcing them, yet in the US they have the 1st amendment.

There the public castigate people who indulge in what they see as hate speech, and without the law being involved or the sky falling in for the lack of government control. I think this is a better system, I like to know what people really think, in a free speech society I know better what peoples views truly are. I note here that bad people throughout history often have been very honest about their intentions, Adolf and Mein Kampf for example.

As for the EU election result, despite EU nationals being involved it confirmed significantly more voters are motivated by leave then remain. Nothing has changed, we need a WTO brexit, and the conservative party needs to deliver it to have a hope at the next GE.

Leavers pay BBC licence fees, just the same as Remainers. Leavers are therefore entitled to a BBC which gives an even handed approach. This never happens and the bias displayed by the BBC is an outrage.
Since Farage intends to have a go at the voting system and the House of Lords, I suggest he also sets about demanding the BBC dismantles the institutional bias against those who dared to vote Leave.

I have read that Conservative Party High Command, ahead of the election of a new leader, have already started to foist EU supporting candidates on those constituencies who have lost their “Conservative” MPs to other parties.

It is time that all constituencies should be given the right, through petition, to request their MP undergoes a by-election. It is simply no longer sustainable that an MP can continually and brazenly vote in Parliament in ways which are opposite to those they put forward in their election manifesto.

Some Remainer had claimed that the BBC is not so biased because previous employees were Tories. One of these was the candidate for Brighton and the other was the brother of a Tory MP and was chosen by May to be in her Remain squad in the number 10 bunker after running the BBC Remain politics show. It does confirm that the BBC and CCC are on the same side and EU loyal.

Labour’s John McDonnell still doesn’t get it after Labour’s thrashing at the EU elections . He still saying there’s a need for a public vote. Well we’ve had just had another public vote in case he missed it and you lost again. etc ed

Sir John, the immediate political task is, as you say, leaving. Unfortunately, Farage – from reasons, I suspect, of vanity – has decided to make this task more difficult by promising to campaign against the Conservatives at a general election. There is, alas, a sufficiency of angry voters out there to help him in this mammoth version of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. This is why the Conservative party needs to address several problems at once: it needs a charismatic, Eurosceptic leader who will also appeal to the core vote on many other issues. He must scrap HS2. He should reduced the general level of taxation. He should tackle the problem of bias in impartial branches of government. Forcing such a programme to a vote on a three line whip, he should expel the recalcitrant and replace them with real Tories. Then he should go to Farage daring him to help Corbyn. That will put both of them back in their boxes.

What you are asking of the Conservative party they will not deliver. Just because there are good and honourable Brexiters in the party doesn’t make the party itself this. They are not yeast that work through the dough; rather they are, from your perspective, the icing on the cake, and from the other perspective, mould on the loaf. The present Parliamentary Conservative party will not deliver a proper Brexit. Deselecting all the softies and remainers is simply not viable, either in the short or long term. The Conservative party is the party of big business and establishment vested interests. This is it’s DNA. Farage may well be far from perfect, and the Brexit Party has much work to do to make itself a safe bet for good governance, but at least it has a chance. And it would have a much better chance were the likes of our host and other like minded MPs to join it.

You think this would have had any chance of happening without Farage and the Brexit Party supporters? The Conservative Party chose May and Cameron selected Remain candidates. They will still try to undermine the referendum. It is the Conservative Party that will be put in a box and buried. May has shown that the party is dishonest and will always sell out to big business and the EU and UN.

I’m afraid your party still isn’t listening. We hear that the MP candidate selection committee is still favouring remainers. This is why parliament doesn’t represent the 52/48 split in the country. Until you get this changed a proper Brexit won’t be delivered. You need to get your party rebuilt from the bottom up. The Brexit Party is like a breath of fresh air. It will be interesting to see what policies they come up with for the next GE. To current 2 main parties have treated the British people appallingly. This is now about much more than Brexit.

There is no sane way to claim that ‘Brexit won’. Farage got a few per cent more than in 2014 – that’s not a surge, especially if you asssume that many Conservative voters moved to Farage – then he must have lost some of his 2014 voters.

Please look beyond this polarisation. The climate catastrophe requires pan-European and international collaboration. How are we supposed to achieve that as an independent small country on a world stage dominated by blocs and countries the size of Russia and China?

Craig….good question. Have you thought of sending that sweet little school girl from some Scandinavian place to wave her placards outside the Kremlin, and Tiananmen Square, maybe outside the White House too? That’ll sort it.

Craig Miller, There is no climate catastrophe, either now, or predicted by scientists (whose predictions have been direly wrong, anyway). In fact I have been assured by one consensus climate scientist that CAGW was invented by climate sceptics to discredit climate science. So why do you pop up whining about it on a blog about the EU elections? Or at all?

People voted SNP and Plaid for Nationalist reasons and Green for environmental reasons, all three parties had support long before Brexit, to add their votes to the Lib Dems, who themselves have a supporter base is not just lazy, it is outright fiddling.

It is clear that the BBC needs reform (the ‘regulator’ is clearly not fit for purpose).

As an MP, you are in a position to do something about it – it would be useful to hear your thoughts in a future article.

Is scrapping the licence fee the only way that would actually work? What strikes me is that BBC were the only channel putting on an election show into the night (or, in fact, putting on an election show at all).

Well, we have convinced each other. That might be regarded as the easy bit.
The challenges going forward are, first, is to win the argument that so-called No Deal is not some form of economic Armageddon. The public case here has not been articulated with any force or intelligence. Commentators, Hammond, Spurgeon and all, always refer to a “disastrous” “cliff edge” and so on. We know that is nonsense and even Mr Carney’s estimates suggest its all manageable and that is without discounting his usual margin of error. Secondly, it has hardly emerged that if there is a “hard border”, meaning some form of customs checks and “infrastructure,” it will be because the Irish put it there not the UK. This might come as a shock to some MPs. My understanding is that, apart from “getting one over the Brits” as Mr Varadkars’ good luck card displayed, the Irish have been told that Irish exports to the rest of the EU would be subject to checks if the border was open. It is really an intra-EU matter and should be exposed as such. But to quote St Paul, not accurately, if the trumpet sound an uncertain note, who will sound the charge?

I’ve been told that significant numbers of university students are registered to vote at two addresses: their university accommodation and their family home address. The students I spoke to said that they and their friends had voted twice in the local elections for the Lib Dem’s and were doing likewise in the Europeans . If this is replicated nationwide, it raises serious questions about the veracity of the election results. It strikes me that this matter requires urgent investigation.

Its clear to me that both the PM & The Chancellor have betrayed the Brexit process
They have wasted three years and have no place in government
Poor communication, Poor negotiation, Weak leadership
We could have been out by now and thriving
No one is in the mood for compromise
We have been ripped off by our own government
Good Luck Nigel

P.S. That Prof Curtice was shown up last night as well. His long monologue had 20 seconds of analysinsgh the polls, followed by a long political discourse about “finding compromise”.

It is not supposed to be his job to decide that any compromise is needed.

If that were so, then when someone wins a seat at a GE by a single vote, they would have to let the second-placed candidate sit in the HoC for 6 months of the year – or enact roughly 50% of their policies.

But that’s not how it works, in a democracy, winner takes all even if they win by a single vote and certainly if they win by 1.3 million votes.

We need to constantly remind these losers of these basics of our politics.

If we leave on WTO terms, offering to discuss a trade deal and start to see the economy doing as well as we believe it will then the country won’t need any “healing” – we will simply move on to other matters.

So still after 3 years of anti EU propaganda only a third of voters chose a Leave party. And worse still the Brexit vote was achieved because a rabblerouser and demagogue like Farage was behind it. Without him it will collapse again in the same way as his former party UKIP has ended in failure. UKIP and Change UK suffered a total collapse.

Neither did the predicted right wing swing across Europe materialise. Well done the Greens.

After 3 years of wailing crying, conspiracy theories media character assassinations petulance and civil service stitch ups, Remain has just LOST its 4th election/referendum in a row….

Oh, you might want to check the results in UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland and Hungry . The Greeks have been forced to call a GE . You’re right The Greens did very well in Germany at the expense of SPD ( the original architects of federal Europe)

I’m surprised by just how low the turnout was, although some of my relatives did point out they wouldn’t be voting on principle alone — “we should not even be having these elections, it’s a national disgrace”.

Fair comment, but since they were all Leavers I’m sorry they didn’t turn out just to reinforce the message that Leave Means Leave. Equally, though, the staunch Remain vote has nothing to crow about (despite the desperate BBC spin) since we can safely assume every single one of those people turned out…

Most though, clearly, are simply past caring — a sad state of affairs indeed for our once-great nation.

Yes MPs need to get on with Brexit, but not much is going to happen before the Conservatives get a new leader, and by then the EU will have gone off on their holidays. As I said the other day , the Conservatives need to get on with electing a new leader. I don’t believe we can afford the time while Tories indulge a load of no hopers clogging up the process.

Of course each of us can put our own preferred interpretation on that statistical fact, but for sure the results of this low turnout election should not be used to cast doubt upon the continuing validity of the result of a referendum with double the turnout.

The real issue is Hammond slashing the government budget deficit because he believes in a magic number.

SO what is the right size of a govt budget “deficit ” is it 2%, 3%, 5%, 8% or 10%

The answer to that question with todays monetary system

Is what is the right size of non government sector “surplus ” is it 2%, 3%, 5%, 8% or 10%

There is no magic numbr of course a deficit is too big when it causes inflation and a deficit is too small when it causes unemployment.

The ONS shows cleary what Hammond has been doing everytime he cuts household and business ” surplus ” He just pushed more households and businesses into debt.

Quarterly sector accounts, UK: April to June 2018 from the ONS

In Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2018, real household disposable income grew for a second consecutive quarter, with growth of 0.4%, compared with an upwardly revised growth of 0.7% in the previous quarter.

Despite a marginal increase in the households’ saving ratio to 3.9%, in Quarter 2 2018, it remains historically low and is the fourth-lowest since records began in 1963.

Households were net borrowers for a seventh consecutive quarter (at £7.2 billion) in Quarter 2 2018 as they continue to spend and invest more than they received in income.

Corporations increased their net borrowing by £11.7 billion in Quarter 2 2018, to 2.2% of GDP.

This has to change after Brexit. As the governemt accounts clearly show the govt budget ” deficit ” = the non govt sector “surplus ” to the penny if you run a trade deficit.

You can’t keep slashing household and business ” surplus ” if you want a healthy economy with well paid jobs.

The only time the govt should be running a budget surplus when running a trade deficit and thus push households and businesses into deficit is when the economy is booming and there are inflationary pressures everywhere. To take household and business spending power away. To give the private and public sectors time to adjust.

Gold standard and fixed exchange rate thinking and thinking that government fianances opertates like a household budget has to stop.

They no longer apply.

This thinking has caused so much damage to this country. If Brexit is to be a success we have to use the monetary system we have not one that we left decades ago.

Derek Henry, The result of pretending that the government’s finances are not like a household (or a business) is financial ruin and hyperinflation – Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela come to mind. Your theories have been tried many times and failed.

Weimar, Zimbabwe and Venezula were not because of increased spending. That’s really lazy thinking.

Inflation is harder to get going than it looks?

And what did go on in the German Wiemar republic, where if you parked a wheelbarrow full of money thieves would take the wheelbarrow and leave the money? Turns out it was those pesky war reparations that caused government deficit spending to soar to something like 50% of GDP annually, with most of that whopping deficit spending used to sell the German currency and buy foreign currency to pay their war reparations. As expected, that drove their currency down the rat hole in short order, and kept driving it down, causing that famous bout of hyper inflation that didn’t end until that policy ended. And when all that ended and policy changed the inflation stopped dead in its tracks. In one day.

So how about Zimbabwe? Turns out they had a tad of civil unrest that dropped their productive capacity by about 80%, but government spending stayed high and too much spending power with too few goods and services for sale drove prices through the roof. Not to mention rumors of insiders using the local currency to buy foreign currencies for personal gain (sound familiar).

Venezula pegged their currency a no no. Borrowed in a foreign currency a complete no no. Then suffered from the Dutch bulb disease and didn’t diversify and concentrated on oil and got paid in $’s. When the $ price was high they borrowed $’s when the oil price dropped they couldn’t pay it back

You would understand all this of course if you studied the government accounts.

If the Conservative MPs and members select a new Brexit supporting leader, as they should do after the EU election results, then with a new PM and a cabinet removed of the extreme EU supporters such as Hammond, Lidington, Rudd, Gove, Gauke, Stewart, Cox, Javid, Hunt, Handcock etc.it will seem as if a GE has taken place and a completely new government is in power.

A government with a positive instead of a corrosive and negative approach to Brexit will be transformational as it was just after the referendum when MPs voted 3 to 1 to trigger Article 50 – a majority of 384.

If Scotland decided to become independent and decided to create its own central bank and currency and called the currency the Kilt.

Because everyone wants to see what is behind it.

And the Scottish government said to the Scottish people okay give us your kilts as we want to spend. Nobody would have any kilts as they have not been spent into the economy yet.

And the Scottish government said to the Scottish people okay give us your kilts as we want to Borrow. Nobody would have any kilts as they have not been spent into the economy yet.

Gold standard, fixed exchange rate thinking has to STOP.

The Scottish govt would spend the Kilts into the economy first and then collect taxes from that spending to control inflation.

Then if the Scottish people wanted a Scottish bond they would then buy the bonds using the Kilts they were given by the Scottish govt. A simple asset swap at the central bank from a reserve balance to an interest bearing bond.

Borrowing isn’t even a fiscal operation like that of a household. It is monetary policy a reserve drain so the central bank can hit its overnight interest rate.

Yet, voters vote thinking it works like a household and that we are still on the gold standard and fixed exchange rates as that is what they have been told.

That is ridiculous.
You launch a new currency.
It is valued on currency markets against other currencies.
You can print as much as you like but the relative value and confidence in your new currency is important.
Inflation will take over as people refuse kilts and use dollars or pounds or euros.
There are examples today of your theory where the currency is worthless and inflation is impoverishing its own citizens and people have given up using it.

Nonsense you have to pay your taxes in Kilts. Taxes drive the currency

Taxes do not fund government spending end of story the spending comes first taxes are collected from that spending.

Try it at home get some monopoly money from your board game and 100 jelly babies give the first jelly baby £1,000.

The only rule is every jelly baby has to spend all of their income. 1st Jelly baby pays their tax and passes what’s left to the next one. The next one pays their tax and passes what’s left onto the next one. Until you have done it with the 100 jelly babies.

All government spending pays foriteself with any positive tax rate.

Now change the rules and let the jelly babies ” save ” some of their income and see how you get on.

People go into “black economy” mode.
Working for barter or only accepting foreign currency.
Seen it in poor nations where the State has failed economically.
Tax revenues reduce.
The State then prints even more money.
Like drinking sea water to go with your jelly babies.

There’s another vote winner for the Brexit party apart from getting out of the dreaded Eu vote Brexit in a GE and we will have in our manifesto which we would implement unlike other parties and that we would stop the bbc license fee

What I continue to find disgusting is the BBC enabling the constant LibDem/Lab MPs’ propaganda phrase, ‘a confirmatory referendum’, without pointing out that there is nothing to ‘confirm’, as the WA will never be passed (nor, if the EU follows its usual playbook, any amended version to be presented to Parliament, until after we have left).

Also the phantasm that – in their ‘bill’ – passed by the single vote of a convicted Labour MP – MPs have somehow permanently blocked leaving the EU without a deal. This amateur ‘legislation’ is in clear breach of the existing 2018 Withdrawal Agreement, and the next government must do whatever is necessary to strike it down.

We have already had a referendum, and there was no mention in it of ‘reaching a deal’ before leaving.

Edward2, stop playing the stupid old man. The UK voting on a week day does not encourage working people to go voting. And my children in their 20/30s all have to commute starting around 6:30 and are not back in their places before 19:30.
And contrary to what you keep peddling a non negligible number of young people are not spending all their time on computers and game machines (but might not spending it either on buying nice suits on Savile Row).

I’m not impressed by your abuse hefner.
36% of youngsters voted in the referendum is a fact.
Wind your neck in
The polls were open from 7am to 10pm
And you can vote by post or proxy.
Your argument is poor.

Oh, I understand now. Sorry again to be so slow. All your comments to Andy, MH et al. are « all for a debate ».

And as for your fixation on remainers, you don’t know how I voted. What about if, say, as a Gaullist, I had voted for « leave « just to make sure that the EU27 would be rid of the UK as quickly as possible? Have your little grey cells ever envisaged such a twisted vote possible?

This D’Hont (Jefferson) voting method gave rather sensible results. Do I have to put my hopes in the Brexit Party to make sure they push hard to change the ridiculous FPTP system prevailing over most of the UK which has allowed the present situation to prevail where both in Labour and CUP people with rather different views on very many subjects within each of those parties are amalgamated in the name of … what exactly? Are the British people judged being not clever enough to make a proper choice. With FPTP, both the CUP and Labour would have had zero MEP, SNP some in Scotland, LD some in London, TBP everywhere else.
No use to come up with democracy bla bla blah to defend the more and more indefensible FPTP.

hefner,
The pure D’Hont system is party based. A two vote mixed member proportional system is better. With about half the members coming from constituencies independent candidates can still win. With the other half coming from party lists, to make up proportions, then the numbers look like what the electorate chose. Parties can also put leaders that are in non-safe seats at the top of their list just in case. Individuals can vote for a constituency candidate from one party, but cast their party vote elsewhere. (see the New Zealand system for an example).

[UK still needs English parliament outside London with increased devolution, an appraisal of the relationship between executive and legislature.(including bicameral nature), and …]

As far as I know the system as it is used in some continental EU countries would (even) allow a change in the name of the candidates retained after the vote has happened. I am not sure whether this would apply to the way it is used in the UK as the D’Hont voting system is applied differently in different countries.
But I take your point. Thanks.

It is bewildering that successive Prime Ministers have done NOTHING to curtail the left-wing activities of the BBC. Even Mrs Thatcher stood back from actively censuring them. They receive £Billions from the British citizens even taking money from the unemployed, yet neither provide balanced opinion nor balanced news programming.
It is PUBLIC money they are funded with and therefore must be held accountable to the British PUBLIC and explain why they are so heavily biased to one side of the Political Spectrum. Especially when they are our supposed our National Broadcaster. Ex news-reader Peter Sissons has told us he was always referred to the Guardian for his news Stories and this regular practice was confirmed by Michael Burke. Why wasn’t an investigation into the BBC News malpractice made at that time?
They must now be forced to answer to a publicly ELECTED Ombudsman and/or take a pay cut to reduce the outrageously large salaries handed out to far too many mangers, for they no longer represent themselves well amongst the increasing numbers of alternative Radio and TV services who charge us NOTHING.
The BBC clearly, have now become unfit for purpose and a waste of OUR money.

The fundamental objective of the political authorities is to keep the UK in the EU. All other issues are inferior to this one overriding and all-consuming aim.

This explains why the Tories never confront BBC bias.

Why the Tories never demonise Corbyn and McDonnell.

Why the Tories allowed Blair and his cronies allow them to walk away from their conspiracies to conceal crimes.

All comes down to maintaining the Tory-Labour status quo in Parliament.

There is no level of abuse that won’t be ignored to preserve the status quo

We live in vile, disgusting immoral times where political considerations take precedence over the protection of those exposed to abuse

It is vital that the BP is successful at the next GE. We can no longer rely on the spineless Tories to stand up and confront and destroy Labour’s client state and the virus it’s inflicted upon this nation’s people

Wouldn’t it be fairer to consider the change in vote for some parties, after all Green’s aren’t a one issue party, I would imagine some leavers and Remainers voting for Greens regardless of their stance on Brexit as they have always been Green voters. Similar issue with SNP where many people were voting for SNP not for leave/remain and assuming all the Plaid Cymru votes were Remainers when Brexit won Wales and Plaid vote were voting for Plaid not for leave/remain

It is a fact that the Green vote has increased while other Remainers chose the Libdums because the Labour position is not clear and both the Greens and Dums are socialist.
The main problem with the deluge of Green propaganda has been that the other parties have gone along with all their ridiculous claims such as mass extinction, floods and 40,ooo deaths from pollution. These have all been shown to be false by using the IPCC’s own figures and official records for warming claims and showing how pollution has decreased. Also, how the deaths figure is arrived at by multiplying very small estimates of reduced lifespan by the whole population. The limits have been reduced to levels which car makers find difficult to attain and even gas boilers have to be banned, while the really bad pollution in the third world is ignored.

But whenever the matter is reported on BBC and even other supposedly balanced stations, such as LBC, they only invite spokespersons from the Green Party or Client Earth. These then state totally one-sided claptrap as though everything was a proven scientific fact. Of course, the interviewers don’t have a clue about the facts put out by researchers on the other side of the argument and ask no opposing questions. No wonder people who don’t bother to read about the subject are voting Green in increasing numbers.

A differently constituted electorate were not able to top the 17,410,742 votes for Leave in the referendum. The clearest indication that Remain can not get the support out is that in a European election in which the EU27 had a 51% turnout, the UK had a 37-38% turnout -I’ll repeat that – turnout. In the referendum Leave got 37.424% of the (relevant) electorate – Ill repeat that – electorate. Whatever arguments, either way, that people give, this is stunningly clear, the number of remainers needed to demonstrate a clear change of heart of the electorate do not exist – they did not show up.

This is the simple reality, it will of course take may people years to realise this. I think the best thing for many is to decide what they want an independent UK to be – this is a better focus, there are so many more opportunities beyond what the current HoC sees.

I quit the Conservative Party, Sir John, when it appointed its first Lib.-Dem. leader — the term ‘Lib.-Dem.’ didn’t exist then; might have been ‘wet’ … or did that come later under the almost* brilliant Margaret Thatcher? — and have never rejoined. Except under Mrs. Thatcher’s leadership, the party has since been led entirely by its Lib.-Dem. faction.

Now that — in relation to Brexit at least — Mrs. May is f.a.p.p. ‘out of the way’ the involvement of Parliament in decisions relating its implementation is puzzling. The awkward parliamentary arithmetic is nothing to the point: the electorate spoke in the plebiscite of June 2016 and — under a system of universal equal suffrage (not something I support, by the way, but what we actually have) — that is a direct order to the government to leave the Fourth Reich. No ‘ifs’; no ‘buts’.

Who ever finally assumes the rôle of leader of the Conservative Party and therefore First Lord of the Treasury must give the Reich a reasonable opportunity to agree appropriate withdrawal terms and, if they be forthcoming, withdraw the country thereunder … but, aliter, withdraw her as soon as reasonably practicable under W.T.O. &c. rules. There is absolutely no need for Parliament, the General Synod, the Stonehenge Druids or any-one else to vote on it: the only vote of any consequence was cast in the aforementioned plebiscite — conducted, incidentally, entirely on terms devised by and for the benefit of the ‘wets’.

ΠΞ

* I say ‘almost’ because it was she that effectively committed the country to the carbon-dioxide fraud (despite her claim to a background, at Somerville, in science) … solely because she saw it as a means to defeat Arthur Scargill, although it must be said that the evidence that supports its being called a fraud actually emerged some fifteen years later

I don’t think we will leave after all , we have been there at the EU top table now for too long and sure what would we be doing outside looking in.. trying to agree trade deals with them from outside with little or no leverage..no no..the whole thing is preposterous..it’s all pie in the sky. Heard Farage on Ch4..says he will abolish the House of Lords, do away with conservatives and Labour party and run everything himself..sounds a bit like 1930’s style..😄 right on Nigel

Do you understand calibration such as Evolution, memory, consciousness, the markets and Democracy. It’s a complex business. First there are two sides to calibration. In evolution it’s the environment and DNA. One side is the control. In evolution the control is random DNA mutations, but what is the best way in politics? There are also are measures. In evolution it’s breeding successful offspring, but what is it in politics.

Is it possible to create a political party that the voters never want to remove. I believe it is.

The election results show the WA has little support, and a clean Brexit is the way forward.
Remainers may not want this, but they lost the referendum.
It is unfortunate that so many conservative MPs still don’t see this simple truth.

And Lib Dems, Greens and many Labour MPs use this result to argue for a rigged second referendum of Remain vs WA – their idea of democracy, leftie style.

In my naivety I thought the winner of the EU election was the party with the most MEPs elected..

Now it seems we have to add all the votes of the parties that were deemed to be Remain and compare them to those who voted for the Leave parties to determine the winners. Now we have to make certain assumptions that votes for the Remain parties were purely anti Leave and not pro, say climate change and free university education. We do know that both TBP and UKIP and the Change party were fought on In or Out policies.

Where do the votes for Labour and Tory sit? Labour we believe were for a second people’s referendum and consequently were neither nor. The Tories seem to lost direction, so let’s not count them.

To summarise the above it seems the total votes cast were in favour of Remain, based on very flimsy application of statistics.

However I have now come to realise all the above is a total misapplication of figures. If we take into account the 35% turnout and 34% voted Leave it leaves us with 12% of the total voters wanted Leave. Applying this process to the Remain figures approx 13% wanted to Remain. Conclusion 75% didn’t know what they were voting for or even cared.

Perhaps this majority (The Winners) have lost confidence in a Parliament that makes promise but doesn’t deliver.

About John Redwood

John Redwood won a free place at Kent College, Canterbury, He graduated from Magdalen College Oxford, has a DPhil and is a fellow of All Souls College. A businessman by background, he has been a director of NM Rothschild merchant bank and chairman of a quoted industrial PLC.